MEMORY CITY: Exposures 12 and 13

The inventors of Kodachrome, Leopold Mannes and Leopold Godowsky, Jr. (whose former residence Alex photographed below using Kodachrome processed as black and white) were accomplished musicians –– Mannes a concert pianist, and Godowsky, first violinist for both the San Francisco and Los Angeles Symphony Orchestras. In the 1930’s Eastman Kodak hired the two men and gave them a lab in Rochester to continue working on the color film process they’d been developing in their off hours as musicians.

As the story goes while working in darkness in their lab at Eastman Kodak, the two musicians measured film development times by whistling the last movement of Brahms’ C-minor Symphony.––Rebecca Norris Webb